Firebreak

14

The state road was just ahead, their motel a dozen miles to the right. "Turn left," Parker said.

Lloyd, at the wheel, didn't argue. The four of them were crammed shoulder to shoulder on the bench seat of the truck, Parker next to the right door, ducking his head from time to time to look in the outside mirror. But there was no pursuit, and nothing to block them at the intersection up ahead. The cops up at the lodge couldn't get out, and they couldn't ask for help. Parker and the others had an hour, maybe more.

Lloyd took the left, a little too fast, and Wiss, next to him, said, 'Take it easy, Larry. Nobody's chasing us now."

"Okay. Okay."

Parker said, "If we go slow, nobody looks at us. Ralph, if we drop you at the next town, can you get yourself a car?"

"Sure," Wiss said. "You want me to go back to the motel? Will do. I get Frank's car and our stuff, and where'll you people be?"

"After the town," Parker said, "we'll take the first dead end on the left. We'll be up in there some place."

'There's a town coming up," Lloyd said. He was trying to be calm, but his voice jittered as though he were being shaken, and his fingers kept flexing on the wheel.

It was a small one-traffic-light town. The light turned green in front of them, so Lloyd rolled through the intersection and pulled to the curb on the far side. He said, "Maybe somebody else can drive."

"I will," Elkins said.

"Good."

Lloyd opened his door and climbed down out of the truck, followed by Wiss, who shut the door. Lloyd, still in his brown security uniform, trotted around the front of the truck as Elkins and Parker both moved along the seat to their left. Wiss strolled away, hands in his pockets, and Lloyd got up onto the seat next to Parker. His grin flickered, like a lightbulb about to blow. Shutting his door, he said, "I'm beginning to feel the aftereffects." His teeth were chattering.

'That's okay," Parker told him, as Elkins put the truck in gear. "Shake it out."

Lloyd did. Next to Parker, he twitched as though electric currents were running through him. "I was okay while it was going on," he said, "but now?" He held his shaking hand up and looked at it. "I don't think I could write my name."

"You don't have to," Elkins told him, "so don't worry about it."

The first road on the left with a sign reading dead end was a narrow two lanes, dirt. A low wooden prefab house at the corner had swings and toys all around it, but a quarter mile up the road the evergreens started. When they got up that far, in among the trees, Parker said, "Stop here."

Deep drainage ditches ran on both sides of the road, dry now, for the spring thaws. Elkins stopped pretty much in the middle of the road, and all three got out to walk around back to see what they had.

Four crates. "Not many," Lloyd said.

Elkins said, "Larry, that fella Marino had a very good eye. It doesn't matter which four these are, they'll buy you a dozen new faces."

"One will do me."

No two crates were the same size, but all were very heavy. They wrestled them out of the truck one at a time, then slid them down into the right-hand drainage ditch, hauled them up the other side, and shoved them flat as far as possible under low evergreen branches. Then Parker said to Elkins, "Drive it on up a couple miles, somewhere you can get it off the road. We'll wait here."

"Fine."

Elkins turned, about to jump across the ditch, but then paused to look back at Parker and said, "Larry did good."

"He did fine," Parker agreed.

Elkins met his eyes for a minute, then shrugged and said, 'That's okay, then," and jumped the ditch.

As Elkins drove the truck farther up the road, Parker sat on a protruding corner of crate. "Now we wait," he said.

"I'm not even cold," Lloyd said.

"Uh-huh."

Parker sat looking at the road, listening to the faint rustle of the woods. It would be an hour, maybe more, before Wiss got here. They could drop Parker at the airport in Bismarck, North Dakota, on their way home to Chicago, he'd take a plane east, call Claire.

Lloyd said, "I'm too jumpy to sit." He walked back and forth, back and forth, looking at the road, looking with wonder at his own hands. Finally, he stopped to face Parker and say, "So you aren't going to do it."

"No need," Parker said.

"Good." Lloyd gazed around at the woods, calmer now, smiling at the day. "Smell the trees," he said. "That's a great smell."

END